The extent to which any nation may be said fully to account for its
past is a variable quantity but always a contentious one, especially when
the measure attempts to include or exclude marginalised, victimised, or
oppressed points of view. That Japan has not fully accounted for its
recent past is of course a matter of controversy, but this process of
accounting is an ongoing one regardless of from whose perspective the measure is
taken. The process includes high school textbooks which attract attention
from Japan's neighbours, as well as numbers of other publications both
denying or analysing Japan's role in the first half of the 20th
century as either a benevolent leader in Asia or a colonial power bent on
territorial expansion for purely selfish ends. And, of course, cinema
plays a role in this process, as well, with several recent films
addressing aspects of Japan's wartime and pre-war history from a variety of
genres, budgets, and political viewpoints.

Hoshi Mamoru's Warai no daigaku (University of Laughs, 2004) is
set in Tokyo's Asakusa theatre district in the early-war
years and presents the story of a comedic playwright, Tsubaki (SMAP member
Inagaki Goro), hoping to have a script approved by a police censor, Sakisaka
(Yakusho Kōji). The film is a comedy, and a very well presented one at that,
despite the oft-repeated references to the current 'crisis' of
Japan's increasingly difficult war-time reality. The censor is an
emotionless man who tells the playwright on their first meeting that he
believes censorship to be completely unnecessary—'everything,' he says,
'should be banned outright!'

The film is quite simple in its
structure—presented as a series of meetings on succeeding days between Sakisaka and Tsubaki, it is essentially a filmed play with these characters
bearing the burden of 'entertaining' the audience, thus mimicking the notion
of the plays under censorship review in the film itself—and yet, despite the
staged nature of this work, Hoshi and his cinematographer, Takase Hiroshi, and
editor, Yamamoto Masaaki, have effectively avoided the static quality so
prone to overrun other filmed plays. The camera work is vibrant and
energetic, bringing us into intimate close-ups with the characters but also
with the scripts the censor reads, infusing each with life and potential.
Street scenes of Tsubaki on his way to each meeting are lively and capture
the air of excitement that still hangs over parts of Tokyo's Asakusa even
today. But it is the interplay between the tough-as-nails Sakisaka and the
green though remarkably optimistic Tsubaki that drives this film forward,
allowing it to become a complex allegory for opposing political opinions
about nationalism, sacrifice, and the validity of art, entertainment, and the
human spirit's potential to transcend temporary crises; thus to maintain
sight of the enduring fundamentals of the human community.

The governmental
apparatus of regulation, as represented by Sakisaka's stoney-faced
insistence on his inability to 'comprehend humour', here becomes a component
of the absurdity of a totalitarian system impervious to compassion and
insensitive to the simple needs of its citizenry—and yet the film presents
this undeniably apt critique in a disarmingly off-hand way that makes its
own politics seem perfectly natural, precisely by having Tsubaki innocently
co-opt Sakisaka into the process of rewriting the play perpetually on the
verge of being banned. It is the very seriousness with which Yakusho has
Sakisaka respond to every new draft and his righteous moral outrage at the
young playwright's light-hearted treatment of his characters, even as he
undergoes the inevitable transformation into a willing and supportive lover
of theatre itself, that provide so much of the humour here, and give the
historical critique such a biting edge. And make no mistake, there is indeed
considerable historical critique beneath the otherwise 'naïve' surface of
this sophisticated film. Without a doubt, Warai no daigaku is fully
aware of the true seriousness of war-time censorship and the devastating
effects it had on the lives and work of so many playwrights and theatre
troupes in the twenty years before the end of the war. It is precisely this
awareness that allows its humour to reach its target so efficiently,
skewering the bureaucratic imperative to self-importance so accurately.

In contrast to the light though ultimately profound Warai no daigaku,
the made-for-television Bokutachi no sensō (Our War,
2005, Kaneko Fumiki) presents a surprisingly effective drama about a young
surfer, Ojima Kenta, (Moriyama Mirai) who, through an electrical storm in
2005, switches places with a young soldier, Ishiwa Goichi (also played by
Moriyama), plucked from the early summer of 1945. The two are identical, and
identically confused by their sudden transformations. As they struggle with
the strange and frightening times in which they each find themselves, they
grow as men and human beings, coming to realise much about the situations
that had created them, and their roles in their own lives and history. Here
it is history that emerges as larger than life and more important than the
lives which create it; this is the fundamental message of this film, that
each individual life is important in so far as it contributes something to
the greater social processes that contain it. This is the lesson which Ojima
and Ishiwa both learn, and which allows them to make sense of the fates
which the film's ending brings to them.

This ending may be ambiguous in terms of the fates of each character (one
dies, one returns to his proper time, but which is which is purposely left
vague), but it is absolutely unambiguous in terms of the acceptance of those
fates which each character manifests, and unambiguous in terms of its stance
vis à vis the events and sacrifices of 1945—the present has not lived
up to them, the film-makers resolutely proclaim, in having become seduced and
obsessed by wealth, comfort, and convenience. This point is abundantly clear
in the explicit reactions of Ishiwa, upon awakening in modern-day Tsukuba,
and seeing the various English-language shop signs from his hospital window:
'Is this America?' he asks in bewilderment. Later on, seeing a group of
youths callously and casually knock over an elderly woman, his indignation
is palpable, as he declares that it was to build 'this world!' that so many
had sacrificed and died so long before. The Ojima-character, too, comes to
realise the necessity of self-sacrifice in order to permit the future birth
of his girlfriend, Minami (Ueno Sari), and so discovers his place in
history, transforming himself in the process from a self-serving, ungrateful
youth, into a man capable of living for others even as he willingly accepts
his own destruction. But this is the aim of the film—to reinforce in its
viewers the validity, indeed, even the necessity, of self-sacrifice, to
instil in those viewers a desire to live up to the sacrifices of previous
generations who, the filmmakers believe they have demonstrated, have given
everything to make the present possible.

But it is the rationale behind this reinforcement of the validity of
self-sacrifice that is most questionable here, coming as it apparently does
to impress upon the viewers that through their daily lives, they may still
find many and adequate opportunity to prove themselves. And where, then, do
these opportunities arise? This the film does not answer explicitly—but the
early and repeated listing of the film's sponsors (including Kao, Toyota,
Asahi Beer, and DoCoMo, whose slogans all appear before, more frequently,
and even more prominently than even the names of the performers, producers,
or director) certainly makes clear the role of corporate Japan in setting
the political agenda for the work.

While Warai no daigaku is implicitly anti-war in demonstrating the
absolute waste of talent and human potential it entails—and the absurdity of
governmental restrictions it necessitates—Bokutachi no sensō
is far more insidious in its acceptance of war as an inevitable component of
development, social, historical, and personal, and sacrifice as a requisite
for maturity and responsibility. The film's highlighting of the training of
kamikaze fighters and their presentation as idealistic, dedicated, and
willing to give their lives for even the slightest possibility of benefit
for their nation foregrounds the film's politics as conservative and indeed
manipulative—the film is very successful at placing the 'blame' for the
necessity of suicide fighters onto the marauding presence of enemy vessels
in Japanese coastal waters, thus shifting responsibility for Japan's
war-time situation onto factors extrinsic to Japanese actions. That is, this
film partakes of a perpetuation of the conception of Japan-as-victim during
the Pacific War, even while it demonstrates the fanatical devotion of
war-time youth for the national cause.

Of course Bokutachi no sensō is
certainly not alone in its presentation of a 'victim Japan', and this
presentation is far from new. Isao Takahata's Hotaru no haka (Grave of
the Fireflies, 1988), for example, demonstrates the tremendous pathos
inherent in Japan's wartime experiences, while also demonstrating a
politically motivated attitude in their representation. Hotaru, while
one of the most heartbreaking films ever made, is also one of the most
historically revisionist, presenting, as does Bokutachi no sensō,
Japan as purely a 'victim nation' in the Pacific War. A generation of
Japanese youth have grown to maturity with this film and its attitude. That
it is anti-war is undeniable, but so too is the notion that together with
Japan's hesitation fully to account for war-time events in historically
accurate ways, this film works to reinforce a type of historical blindness
exploitable by politically astute members of Japan's re-emerging 'right
wing'. The films under review here react or play into this re-emergence in
different ways, but both are aware of it. This awareness is inevitable, of
course, because after all history—even for those who may seek to deny
it—remains effective as a shadow, obstacle, or monument for the present. It
is with the construction of the present that these films deal, and the
reconfiguration of the past as a component of that construction. That both
are able, coherently and persuasively, to present diametrically opposite
attitudes to that past, is testament to the skill of the film-makers, but
also to the complexity of the ongoing evolution of Japan's stance in
relation to its past.

About the Author

Timothy Iles is Assistant Professor of Japanese
Studies at the University of Victoria,
British Columbia, Canada, where he teaches Japanese culture, cinema, and
language. He has an MA from the University of British Columbia in Modern
Japanese Literature, and a PhD from the University of Toronto, also in
Modern Japanese Literature. He has taught courses on Japanese literature,
theatre, culture, and cinema in Canada and the United States, and has
published articles on those subjects. He is also author of Abe Kobo: an
Exploration of his Prose, Drama, and Theatre (Fuccecio: European Press
Academic Publishers, 2000).